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Via RT
Switzerland is seeing a worrying increase in the number of sex attacks carried out against animals and in particular horses. Figures showed cases of animal abuse rose to 1,709 in 2014, an increase of 1,542 from the previous 12 months.

The findings are worrying animal rights groups as it is a problem that seems to be getting worse. The foundation, known as Tier im Recht (Animals in Law), said the amount of abuse cases reported was triple compared to a decade ago.

However, it seems as though horses are coming under particular threat, with almost 10 percent of cases maltreatment of the animals involving bestiality.

“This rate is relatively elevated compared with other types of animals,”Andreas Ruttimann, a legal expert with Tier im Recht, told the Local.

“A total of 105 cases of animal cruelty to horses were registered last year, up considerably from previous years but probably below the actual number of incidents,” he added.

Worryingly, the group believes the actually figure could be much higher, given that around 150,000 people in Switzerland take part in equestrian activities. It also adds that there are more than 110,000 horses at 18,000 farms in the country.

The 20 Minuten newspaper reported that experts believe that as many as 10,000 people living in Switzerland are suspected of practicing zoophilia (sex with animals). Tier im Recht says the higher prosecution rates are down to tougher animal protection laws being introduced by the government, to protect their welfare.

Switzerland has a population of just over 8 million, meaning 0.125 percent of the population have a penchant for zoophilia.

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Sarah Mbuyi, a Christian nursery worker, is to claim she was sacked from her job due to religious discrimination, as a group backing her case says David Cameron’s defense of faith is ‘failing to play out’

A Christian nursery worker is taking her former employers to court claiming she was sacked for her beliefs after refusing to read stories about gay couples to children.

Sarah Mbuyi says she was dismissed due to religious discrimination, having also been accused of “harassing” a lesbian colleague to whom she gave a Bible when she was recovering from an accident.

The case, lodged at an employment tribunal, comes amid growing concerns among some Christians that religious beliefs are being “outlawed” in the workplace. A Christian group backing the case says it is an example of believers being “robbed” of the freedom to express views.

Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, has warned that “militant atheists” are attempting to impose “politically correct intolerance” on others. “We’re a Christian nation,” he insisted.

Last week David Cameron said Christians should be “more evangelical” about their faith and “get out there and make a difference to people’s lives”. But the Christian Legal Centre, which is funding Miss Mbuyi’s case, said his words were “failing to play out”.

Miss Mbuyi, 30, who lives in north London, carries a Bible. She started work for Newpark Childcare, a London-based group of four nurseries, last April, before being taken on full-time in one of the schools in September.

The same month a lesbian worker also joined the nursery, in Shepherd’s Bush, west London. After discovering that Miss Mbuyi was Christian she repeatedly asked her about her beliefs, the tribunal will be told.

Miss Mbuyi, now working at another nursery, will claim her colleague sought to provoke her. In December the co-worker spent time in hospital having had an accident at work and Miss Mbuyi gave her a Bible on her return.

The present, Miss Mbuyi says, was as a result of the interest she had shown in her faith. It was received well, she insists.

The following month, however, Miss Mbuyi, a Belgian national who came to Britain six years ago, says her colleague told her she had received abuse about her sexuality from religious people in the past.

During the discussion, Miss Mbuyi says she told the woman that “if I tell you that God is OK with that I am lying to you”.

At a disciplinary meeting, her employers accused Miss Mbuyi of “harassing” her co-worker, saying such behavior amounted to “gross misconduct”. The co-worker could not be reached for comment.

Her employers inquired how she would feel if she was asked to read children’s storybooks featuring same-sex parents. She replied that she would not be able to read such books.

Andrea Williams, chief executive of the group, said: “Sharing Biblical truths out of genuine love and concern for colleagues is being outlawed in the workplace by a dominating cultural correctness. There is a culture of fear which closes down freedom of speech and the manifestation of faith. This culture brands the liberating good news of the Gospel as oppressive and regressive.

“The Christian Legal Centre is representing Sarah Mbuyi as the latest in a line of Christians who are being threatened by a movement to repress Christians from living out a genuine expression of their faith in a country which once led the world in freedom and justice.”

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In his most widely anticipated address since taking over the leadership of the Church, the Most Rev Justin Welby insisted that it was now “absurd and impossible” to ignore an “overwhelming” change in social attitudes.

In a deliberate echo of Harold MacMillan’s 1950 speech which attacked apartheid in South Africa, the Archbishop warned church leaders that they needed to reassess their own attitudes to gay people – even if they do not “like it”.

While insisting he had no immediate plans to change policy on issues such as gay marriage, he announced a major campaign to curb anti-gay bullying in the Church of England’s more than 5,000 schools.

He is understood to have approached Stonewall, which led the campaign in favour of gay marriage, to invite it into church schools to teach up to a million children about homosexuality.

“We may or may not like it but we must accept that there is a revolution in the area of sexuality,” the Archbishop said.

His comments, signalling a dramatic change in tone from the established church, came in his first address as Archbishop to the Church’s General Synod which is meeting in York as it attempts to come up with a new solution to the fiasco over women bishops.

In a wide-ranging address he said that Britain, like other countries, is living through a “time of revolutions” affecting the economic and political sphere but also in social attitudes.

He acknowledged a “radical” decline in religious affiliation, as borne out by the recent census and other polling, as well as an “overwhelming” shift in public attitudes on issues such as sexuality where “predictable attitudes” were disappearing.

But he insisted that the Church could benefit and even begin to grow again if it was willing to “respond radically and imaginatively” to a changing world.

The Archbishop, who visited Egypt last week, drew comparisons with the fast-moving situation in the country.

“We live in a time of revolutions,” he said.

“And the trouble with revolutions is that once they start no-one knows where they will go.”

Turning to the “many revolutions” underway in Britain, he said: “The cultural and political ground is changing, there is a revolution.

“Anyone who listened to much of the Same Sex Marriage Bill Second Reading Debate in the House of Lords could not fail to be struck by the overwhelming change of cultural hinterland. Predictable attitudes were no longer there.

“The opposition to the Bill – which included me and many other bishops – was utterly overwhelmed, with amongst the largest attendance and participation and majority since 1945.

“There was noticeable hostility to the view of the churches”.

He admitted that it had been “close to the bone” to evidence of young gay people driven to suicide because of uncaring attitudes from churches.

“In some things we change course and recognise the new context.

“In others we stand firm because truth is not set by culture, nor morals by fashion.

“But let us be clear, pretending that nothing has changed is absurd and impossible.”

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, said: “Of course we will always help an education provider in helping to tackle homophobic bullying in schools and there are already several dozen Church of England schools working with Stonewall.

“But the cynic would be tempted to think perhaps that the Archbishop is trying to distract attention from his failure to engage gay people – when they requested it over the issue of marriage.”

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Based on Wednesday’s Supreme Court ruling, in which the Court majority determined that the Defense of Marriage Act’s federal definition of marriage had to incorporate state-based same-sex marriages, Internal Revenue Service regulations could be modified to remove non-profit status for churches across the country.

The DOMA decision makes clear that marriage is a state-to-state issue, meaning that religious institutions that receive non-profit status on the federal level but do not perform or accept same-sex marriages in states where it is legal could have non-profit status revoked. Furthermore, should the IRS move to revoke federal non-profit status for churches, synagogues and mosques that do not perform same-sex marriage more generally, the Court could easily justify that decision on the basis of “eradicating discrimination” in religious education.

In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled in Bob Jones University v. United States that it was within the scope of the First Amendment’s protections for religion for the IRS to revoke the tax exempt status for the university based on its policy prohibiting interracial dating. The Court determined that the “Government has a fundamental, overriding interest in eradicating racial discrimination in education … which substantially outweighs whatever burden denial of tax benefits places on [the university’s] exercise of their religious beliefs.”

The Supreme Court is clearly leaning toward a similar move here. The Court stated in Romer v. Evans (1996) that states could not take measures to prevent future distinction of gays and lesbians as a protected class under state law; in Lawrence v. Texas (2003) the Court ruled that same-sex sexual activity was Constitutionally protected; in the DOMA case on Wednesday, the Court ruled that DOMA was unconstitutional not merely on federalism grounds, but because it violated the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment and the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

On the state level, a movement is already under way to revoke non-profit status for religious organizations that do not abide by the same-sex marriage. In Massachusetts in 2006, Boston Catholic Charities withdrew from adoption services thanks to the state mandate on same-sex adoptions, rather than fight the issue in court. In California, a bill is already making its way through the legislature to bar non-profit status for any religious youth group that discriminates on the basis of “gender identity, race, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or religious affiliation.”